Time for PETA to change their campaign strategy
The male oppressor with the vulnerable and scared female.
If it looks like violence against women and it smells like violence against women, is it violence against women? Nope. It could be the anti-animal testing campaign Fighting Animal Cruelty by cosmetics company Lush and About-Face frequent offender PETA. The new campaign by the two companies has become a worldwide phenomenon in a matter of weeks by having a performance artist sit in a Lush store window and undergo cosmetics testing by a male doctor.
PETA’s campaigns are famous for being shockingly sexist by openly comparing women (not all people — women) to animals. At this point, it’s not ignorance that PETA can fall back on: “I didn’t know that putting Pamela Anderson in a bikini on a billboard and comparing her to a cow was objectifying women” doesn’t work as an excuse anymore.
The Lush campaign manager, Tamsin Osmond, has stated in a recent post:
I am very aware and very sad that campaigning groups have capitalized on titillating images of women…on images and storylines that encourage the abuse of women… We felt it was important, strong, well and thoroughly considered that the test subject was a woman… the oppressor was male and the abused was vulnerable and scared. Continue reading
Yves Saint Laurent sells hope in a jar with Forever Young Liberator
Women don’t really fall for the outrageous claims of beauty products… do they?
You know that saying “There’s truth in humor”? Well, it’s never been more accurate than in the hilarious send-up that positions Adobe Photoshop’s technology as a fancy, Euro (“by Adobé”) beauty product.
Fotoshop, by Adobé, isn't real, but then neither are society's standards of beauty.
What’s so great about the spoof (as further detailed in this post by About-Face’s own Jennifer Berger) is how it pokes fun at the conventions regularly found in real beauty ads to show just how absurd they are.
On banning ads, photo-retouching, and (shock!) personal responsibility
These are the banned ads. How can we stop over-retouching in the U.S. for good?
In the wake of the big news that the MP Jo Swinson and the British Advertising Standards Agency has fabulously banned two ads by L’Oreal (owner of Maybelline and Lancome) showing Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington, I’m starting to think about how we — everyday women and girls — can help ourselves out of this body-hatred spiral without totally disconnecting from culture altogether.
How about an approach as multifaceted as women themselves? I’ve been working on issues of women’s and girls’ body image and media messages for about 16 years, so I have some ideas from my own experience:
1) Short-term measure: Ban bad ads and pass the Healthy Media and Youth Act. It’s true, the L’Oreal ads and their ilk should not be out in the world misleading women and girls about the results of their products. Such ads tell us that we need to buy products and get cosmetic procedures (some of which are damaging and/or terrifying) to look more and more “perfect”. (NOTE: You are already perfect.) We should outright protest and ban ads that are overly photo-retouched and demand before-and-after images from advertisers that we can PUBLISH.
But really, women and girls are not dummies. We know that our government (not one to shush our lucrative beauty and fashion industries) or the media (profit-driven interests) to protect women and girls from harmful messages that destroy our self-esteem. It’s probably not going to happen without some legislation and cultural coercion.
Enter the Healthy Media for Youth Act (H.R. 2513). H.R. 2513 would authorize grants to promote media literacy and youth empowerment programs, to authorize research on the role and impact of depictions of girls and women in the media, to provide for the establishment of a National Task Force on Girls and Women in the Media. Shall we all get behind this legislation? Yes, let’s do it!
2) Longer-term strategy: Educate ourselves with some solid media-literacy skills instead of just “turning off the TV” and closing the magazines, and never using the Web. The media coverage of this issue makes women sound like naive victims who can’t think for themselves. Like this:
So, we need to work hard to make these images less powerful in our own psyches by understanding the insidious nature of photo-retouching and how it affects the way we look at our own, sometimes-bumpy, skin. And we need to reject what we see.
(In case you’re wondering, About-Face is doing it: Every year, we teach at least 1,100 students in their San Francisco Bay Area classrooms about the truth about ads and media. We’re working on a curriculum for nationwide use.)
Of course, just turning your head and “not letting it get to you” is easier said than done, especially for those of us who are already injured by media messages that make sure we never feel good enough. That’s why we also need strategies 1 and 3.
3) Person-by-person resistance: Celebrities! Help your sisters out! We need actresses’, celebrities’, and models’ help as our allies. They need to understand that a) we’re not against them and b) more women than they know would see their movies/buy their stuff even more if they seemed to be on our side. Kate Winslet, Charlize Theron, Portia de Rossi, and Cindy Crawford have done a great job of criticizing insane photo retouching, and we need more celebrities to demand minimal retouching instead of full Photoshop makeovers so as not to mislead young women.
So that’s the plan I’d like to put forward.
But you know, I have a couple more points to make. Back to corporate interests for a second.
What really bugs the crap out of me — and what girl advocates should watch for — is the response from L’Oreal. Their PR machine is calling the Julia Roberts image an “aspirational picture”. This just speaks volumes about how ad agencies and advertisers talk about and think about images of women.
“Aspirational.” Meaning that we should keep aspiring (and aspiring, and aspiring, while buying more L’Oreal products) to skin that is literally as perfect-looking as a Photoshopped image. And we wonder why microdermabrasion and facelifts, and Botox injections are so popular. We are Photoshopping our own flesh.
In short: Watch the words used by the beauty industry carefully. They can make “fear of being ugly” sound like “hope of being beautiful!” pretty easily.
So let’s put our blame in the two places it belongs: corporate interests that need squashing, and our own, sub-par critical-thinking skills that we should improve, keep it away from our own faces and bodies.
– Jennifer
Buy your tween anti-aging products at Wal-Mart
Anti-aging products are now a must for tween girls.
Finally! A cure for those prepubescent fine lines and wrinkles!
Yes, seriously.
Hoping to officially crush the innocence of childhood, Wal-Mart has rolled out a line of anti-aging cosmetics geared toward 8- to 12-year-olds.
The “youth preserving” line is called “Geo-Girl” and has 69 products ranging from exfoliators (to scrub off those gross, dead, OLD cells) to lipstick and blush (to achieve that much sought-after Lolita pout).
It gets better (i.e. worse). The products feature “texting lingo,” to appeal to tech-savvy tweens. Now your 10-year-old niece can sport “GR8″ lipshine, and further impede her ability to spell words without digits!
Seriously though, I get it. When I was a kid, I begged my grandma to buy me a kids’ makeup set from Walgreens. And when I ripped open the packaging at home, you know what I found? The pretty, pint-sized products were made entirely of plastic. They were just for applying “imaginary” makeup!
Sure, at the time, I was devastated to find I couldn’t smear pastel blue eyeshadow on my lids (who wouldn’t be?), but it seems pretty obvious to me now: real, usable makeup didn’t exist in the Walgreens toy aisle because it doesn’t belong there! Continue reading
“Make Me Young” makes us think about the world of anti-aging
Mitch McCabe explores the anti-aging world in "Make Me Young."
I laughed, I cried, I contemplated Botox.
It’s true – filmmaker Mitch McCabe’s awesome documentary, Make Me Young: Youth Knows No Pain, was a serious roller-coaster ride through the world of anti-aging, stirring up all kinds of emotions.
The daughter of a plastic surgeon, Mitch explores her fascination with going under the knife by traveling across America, interviewing a host of patients, experts, and skeptics.
What I found so touching and refreshing about Make Me Young was that it didn’t seem to have a moral message, condemning those who opt for nips and tucks. Nor did it glorify the $60 billion a year anti-aging industry that keeps us all anxiously monitoring our crow’s feet and frown lines.
Mitch just wants to talk to people, and find out what they think about themselves, and our youth-obsessed culture. And along the way, we get some insight into her personal past, and how her dad’s work seriously impacted her own preoccupation with growing older.
Watch the trailer below, and if you feel like laughing and crying your way through an exploration of injections and lifts, order the DVD on Amazon.
– Michelle
The skinny on “skinny” products
Forever 21 gives you the skinny, in jean form, and otherwise.
The following post was written by 16-year-old About-Face supporter Haley:
I think I can speak for most girls my age when I say that my generation is an impressionable one. Knowing this, companies constantly bombard us with manipulative ads and products that make us feel worse about ourselves than we already do.
Take skinny jeans, for example. Those things have been around for years, and they don’t seem to be going anywhere. My friends don’t wear any other type of jeans, and they’re certainly the only style I own. But I wish that wasn’t the case. Not only do skinny jeans sexualize girls of all ages to an extent that frightens me — I mean, really, some girls can’t even sit down in them, they’re so tight — but wearing pants with a name like that is just plain problematic.
Sure, tell me that the term “skinny” just refers to how snugly they fit, but the truth is that skinny jeans send some not-so-subtle messages to consumers: you must be extremely thin in order to wear them. And when a disturbing sentiment like that catapults into the media, our culture becomes more and more weighed down by false beauty ideals. As if we needed any more of that. Continue reading
Gallery of Winners: A New Line of Proactiv Women.
Questions to Consider:
Source: The New York Times, May 3, 2010, bus shelters in San Francisco, CA, July/August 2010
* What is this ad selling?
* What does it mean to not be a pushover?
* What does “proactive” mean?
* How does this ad make you feel?
What We Think:
Proactiv’s new campaign has a series of ads with different female celebrities and captions like “I’m no pushover. I’m Proactiv.” I’m not sure how not being a pushover really has anything to do with having clear skin, but this campaign is empowering for women. It is powerful to have Avril Lavigne represent a company that puts out messages like “I’m no pushover,” because Avril Lavigne is a strong, independent female singer. What Proactiv is doing is moving away from ads that encourage women to be passive pushovers and they are taking the road less traveled: they are valuing women for being strong and proactive. No longer should women politely stand waiting for the world (a man?) to happen to them. Women are taking charge of their lives, they are initiating projects and making dents in society: they are Proactiv(e). (By Juliet Weintraub)
Take Action! Contact:
Proactiv Solution
P.O. Box 11448
Des Moines, IA 50336-1448
1-800-235-6050
Contact form on company web site: proactiv.com/contactus.php
MAC and Rodarte give makeup an ugly name with their Juarez line
A model shows off MAC and Rodarte's Juarez-inspired makeup collection.
Whether it’s a case of thinking way too far outside the box, or a cheap attempt to shock and awe makeup junkies, MAC Cosmetics has managed to seriously cross the line.
Collaborating with high-fashion label Rodarte, MAC recently unveiled plans to release a makeup collection in September based on life in the border town of Juarez, Mexico.
Just a little trivia about Juarez: it’s not exactly the picturesque tourist trap that typically inspires beauty trends. Besides being home to hundreds of multinational corporation-owned factories, the city is also known as a veritable murder capital.
At the center of Mexico’s drug wars, Juarez’s violence-related death toll is set to reach 6,000 by the end of the month. Hundreds of these homicide victims have been women traveling to and from their job sites.
Call me crazy, but these facts somehow don’t rouse my desire for a new shade of blush.
But let’s go back to the beginning. Last year, Sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the designing duo behind Rodarte, took a road trip to the town and based their fall collection on the multitudes of female workers making their way to factory jobs in the middle of the night.
The Mulleavys slapped a sexy name on the laborers (“sleepwalkers”) and whipped up a line of ethereal garments based on their nocturnal procession.
As I previously mentioned, there’s a bit of a problem with this dreamy vision (Besides the fact that it’s grossly exploitative to produce high-end fashion designs “inspired” by workers trudging to factory jobs at midnight). Many of the thousands killed in Juarez have been the very “sleepwalkers” Rodarte claims as their muses.
To be fair, fashion is art and art can be controversial, but who in their right minds thought it would be a great idea to get MAC involved and spew out some inappropriately-named cosmetics? Continue reading
Stop turning girlhood into a product!
What does an ideal girl look like? Is she blonde, with a perfect figure and a Chihuahua in her purse? Or is she the brunette with the looks of Megan Fox? Is her favorite physical activity shopping? Media outlets are busy promoting such stereotypes about girlhood. The logic is simple: when girlhood is mainly about looking good, companies that cater to such a “need” will profit.
For instance, toy companies seem to be selling social identities rather than just toys. Girl toys in the Toys R Us online catalog for 2-year-olds include play houses, oven makers and newborn doll strollers–but boy toys include trains, walker pianos and fire engines. Neurobiologist and author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain Lise Eliot argues that the brains of boys and girls are not different at birth. Yet, Toys R Us and the plethora of toy companies would rather defy science and create such gender differences in an attempt to maximize sales. The message they give to our girls is that decorative and homemaking skills must become a priority very early on in life.
It all started in the 1980s when marketing expert James McNeal suggested that targeting products to children at birth would improve customer loyalty. Basically, the idea was that a consumer at birth would be a consumer for life. Companies have faithfully taken his advice. Juliet Schor, author of the book Born to Buy, explains that marketers are eager to target children under age 8 because they cannot spot the commercial intent of advertisements. Instead, kids consider ads information outlets! Continue reading
The ugly truth about cosmetics
Do you know what's in the products you use?
Are the beauty products you use hazardous to your health? The answer is, most likely, “yes”.
When it comes to personal care products in the United States, the FDA does little to protect consumers from harmful chemicals. But we can protect ourselves by researching the products that we purchase and use.